Civil Rights

One evening last December Channing H. Tobias, Negro clergyman, walked into a Horn & Hardart automat in Manhattan. It was during the hours when the restaurant offers table service. But the waitresses snubbed him, neglected to take his order. He called for the hostess. She promised to bring the manager. When he did not appear. Clergyman Tobias, thoroughly angered, summoned a policeman off the street, made him produce the manager. After an hour's wrangling Channing Tobias, no ordinary clergyman but senior secretary of the Y. M. C. A.'s colored work, stormed out in disgust, sued Horn & Hardart for denying his civil rights.

Last week the case was tried by Municipal Court Justice Samuel Ecker and an all-white jury. Counsel for Horn & Hardart was Nicholas Pecora. brother of Investigator Ferdinand Pecora. His argument was that the automat had been shorthanded, and that even a Horn & Hardart executive had had to wait one hour before being served that night. Unimpressed, the jury awarded a verdict to Negro Tobias. Judge Ecker ordered Horn & Hardart to pay him $100.

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